Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness

Genre: Fantasy, RTS

We all know Blizzard from World of Warcraft, but Blizzard produced more games than WoW, like the classic Diablo and Warcraft series. There is one game in particular from the Warcraft series that I’m going to review, and that’s Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness.

Warcraft II: ToD is released in 1995 on the Pc and Mac. Two years later the game was also released on the Playstation and Sega Saturn under the name Warcraft 2: The Dark Saga. In 1999 the game was released together with the expansion pack, Beyond the dark portal, in Warcraft II: Battle.net edition. This release featured online play on Blizzard’s online gaming service, Battle.net.

In Warcraft II: ToD the story continues where Warcraft: Orcs and Humans ended. 6 years after the Orcish Horde conquered Azeroth, they want to conquer Lordaeron too, so they send a large fleet to Lordaeron. The survivors of Azeroth have fled to Lordaeron and the remaining Human nations band together into the Alliance to withstand the Horde. They are joined by the High Elves of Quel'thalas and the Dwarves of Khaz Modan.

Just like in Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, you can choose whether you play as the Alliance, or the Horde. Both campaigns have 14 levels so you'll play for many hours before completing the game.

There are many buildings you can build in this game, like the Barracks (for training units, duh) Farm (1 farm is good for 4 units) and Blacksmith (meant for upgrading your troops). There are 15 buildings for each faction, which are different in looks but similar in function, except for 1 building which is Altar of Storms/Church.

The graphics of this game are very good, considering that this game is from 1995. They can still compete with today's Nintendo DS games. The audio is great as well, the soundtrack really provides an atmosphere.

And when you have completed the campaign you can also try to beat every custom scenario. And believe me, some of those custom scenarios are damn hard to beat. If you want to make it yourself even more difficult, you could add some more enemies. You cannot add allies, only enemies. It's fun to trying to beat 7 enemies, but you always know you will die when you play fair. You could also cheat in this game, but your rank says you’re a cheater when you do.

Furthermore, you can make your own scenarios with the Map Editor. Here, you can add allies as well. You can use those maps online too, but I don’t think there are many Warcraft II players around any more. I’m still a die-hard fan of this game and I already played it for more than a 1000 hours. The only complaint about the map-editor is that you can't make any teams, because your allies attack each other anyhow.

If you own Warcraft III, you should also try out this game. Personally, I think Warcraft II is better than its sequel. One funny detail is that they still used that goofy voice in Warcraft III for the peasants. I don’t think you can still buy WC 2 in stores, so if you want to try this game out, you have to download it. If you are an oldskool gamer you have to check this game out!

Mat Hoffman’s Pro BMX, a game made by the company Runecraft, known for games like Spec Ops, Scrabble, Barbie and Ceasar’s Palace. Activision was the publisher.

One of the things that immediately catches your attention in this game is the similarity to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, this is because the game uses the same engine as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, albeit an edited version. Unfortunately the game feels like a cheap port from the consoles, way worse than Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, which felt a bit like a port but still played smoothly.

In singleplayer the player has to collect covers of magazines by completing certain tasks which differ little each stage, they’re pretty much the same as in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. You have to collect the characters T-R-I-C-K, similar to the S-K-A-T-E in THPS. Other objectives always involve beating a certain highscores, doing a trick at a specific location and destroy a certain amount of things within the time-limit (like 5 lamps). This is of course talking about the Career mode, in which you can unlock new parts for your bike, characters and courses. There’s also a single session mode, a free mode and a map editor for the player that likes to play singleplayer.

Multiplayer features Horse, which can be done co-op on the same computer, in this mode the players have to set a trick and try to get the highest amount of points, if they fail at this they’re given a letter, if all letters create a word the player loses. There´s also a network game mode which I couldn’t test, since either there were no players or the servers are down, since Runecraft has gone bankrupt.

The gameplay in this game is pretty bad, when you’re playing you’ll easily fall. The game also misses a lot of things that made THPS fun to play, like a balance meter when grinding and such, it now only appears when doing a manual. The game also has the tendency to have serious framedrops at random moments. The controls also feel a bit unresponsive at times, making the game hard in an unfair way, especially when compared to THPS where switching between tricks goes amazingly quick. Another thing I missed is the ability to set your own special moves, in this game you have to guess how to pull one off.

The graphics are very bad in this game, they’re nothing compared to THPS3 which was released in the same year and has the same engine. The levels feel empty and dead, there are no people walking around, nothing is moving, you’re the only one that moves in a static environment. The models are all boring and stale, even the bikes aren’t that well done which have textures sticking out of them and weird tires.

The sound in this game is pretty boring and dull, nearly all songs on the playlist are done by unknown artists and all those songs are pretty generic. In THPS3, you did have an amazing soundtrack which was carefully picked to fit the game, it’s a letdown that Runecraft didn’t put as much effort in this game like the creators of THPS3 did with theirs. As far as sound effects go, they aren’t that bad.

I don’t think this game is worth a purchase, due to it’s crappy gameplay, poor graphics and mediocre sounds. If you do want an extreme sports game or something similar to this, I can really suggest THPS3 instead of this one. I think that if you do buy this game, you’ll end up only playing a couple of hours and then throw in the back of your cabinet only to collect dust.

Halo: Combat Evolved, a game created by Bungie studios, which is well known for the Halo series. This company is known for it’s great quality products and Halo: Combat Evolved is no exception. Being the first in the series this game still remains to be a classic, with an active community, even after all these years. This game is available for pc, mac and xbox.

The human race has been cornered by aliens and are under threat. In an attempt to turn things around and to make sure that they don’t find out the coordinates of planet Earth, they active an super-marine known as the Masterchief, which the player plays as. This is used as a last resort, since they haven’t tested him properly, due to lack of time. Your task is to try and destroy the attack or at least put a serious dent in their attack force.

Both singleplayer and multiplayer are very good, I’ll start with singleplayer. In singleplayer, you’ll be dropped/enter various areas from spaceships to various landscapes, there is no urbanised area however, since you’re fighting in enemy bases most of the time. During singleplayer you’ll find the weapon of the planet Halo, The Flood, which are enemies in various shapes, but the weapon can’t be controlled so you’re fighting both the Covenant and the Flood at the same time, which fight against each other as well. During single player you’re alone most of the time, because the normal marines are quite weak. There are multiple difficulty levels, Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary, Legendary being the hardest, making the game accessible to pretty much anyone, with or without experience with the genre or gaming as a whole.

The gameplay is smooth, it’s basic First Person Shooter gameplay but the controls feel great and everything works like a charm. Unlike other FPS’es you’re only capable of carrying 2 guns, which adds another challenge to the game, since you’ll have to scrounge for enemy weapons that you can use, when your ammo runs out. It also helps in multiplayer, because your enemies aren’t able to carry a lot of weapons, meaning that you won’t fight people wearing overpowered weapons which have less ammo with which they switch. In Halo you’re better of wearing one great weapon and a standard one, which comes with more ammo. Halo incorporates the use of vehicles fluently in the game, switching from a first person view to a third person view giving the player a better sight of his surroundings.

The graphics are great, albeit a little bit outdated, nowadays we’re used to HD-quality and bloom effects. This game offers good graphics which don’t require a great pc to run. The effects in the game are very nice, objects reflect sunshine in this game, which was an exception around the time it was released.

The sound is great in this game, the theme song is just fantastic and gets you immediately in the mood to play the game, which is sung by a Georgian choir(from Georgia, the country, not the state). The sound effects coming out of your guns and even the aliens ones, sound pretty realistic. The voices in this game also sound good, Cortana for example (a digital woman), sounds very realistic so do the marines you meet in this game and the screaming enemies. The Covenant even has their own language and you can hear them talking sometimes and you hear the occasional “wort, wort, wort” when they’re walking and haven’t seen you yet.

Multiplayer is the best part about the whole game in my opinion, it’s most of the time fair(you have the occasional cheats and modificated servers). The only complaint I’ve been hearing from various sources is that online gameplay is laggy, I haven’t actually experienced it myself, I have been in servers with severe lag issues, but those were exceptions, usually the games run smooth. There are various gameplay modes, most of which are quite standard, but the player has the ability to create his own game modes. Slayer is your average deathmatch mode(DM), Team Slayer is team deathmatch (TDM), Capture the flag(CTF), King of the hill, in which players have to stay within a switching or unmoving area for a certain time in order to win. Can be done both with teams and solo. Further more you have: Racing, in which you have to drive through certain checkpoints and oddball in which the player has to keep a skull for a certain time limit, whilst doing so he has no means of defending himself except for doing a melee attack with it. Halo: Custom Edition expands the multiplayer aspect of the game even more, granting players the ability to play on custom maps and with various other custom things on it, such as character models, weapons and vehicles.

So when you see this in a shop, don’t hesitate to buy, it’s probably cheap since it’s been released quite some years ago, but not to worry the online community is still alive and kicking, proving that this game is truly a classic.

Warhawk

Genre: Third Person Shooter/Arcade

PS3

The developer of this game is Incognito Entertainment. This company also made the popular series of Twisted Metal.

Warhawk is about a war between 2 nations: Eucadia and Chernova. There isn’t much to say about this war, since we don’t know the background of this war. You’re simply dropped right within it.

The game only has a multiplayer option, so you can’t practise in single player mode. However, there is a training mode, but you have to shoot some robots and they don’t shoot back, so that is nothing like fighting other players.

Warhawk is a flying arcade game, but next to the Warhawk, which has 9 different weapons, there are more vehicles to your disposal, like the tank or Jeep. The Jeep has 3 seats: The driver, the gunner (he uses a stationary machinegun on the back of the jeep) and the passenger. If you got some extra money, you can buy the expansion packs via the Playstation Store. With these expansions you can use some more vehicles like the APC, a troop carrier (plane) or even a jetpack.

You can fight on foot too of course, with 9 different weapons, like the ordinary machine-gun or a flame-thrower. You can also call in air strikes with the binoculars.

If this is nothing for you, you could try to blow some Warhawks(planes) out of the air with the anti-air turret or the SAM or kill some soldiers with the stationary machine-gun.

When you show that you’re a good player, you’ll acquire various ribbons, badges and medals. When acquiring ribbons you’ll receive bonus points. For every kill you get 1 point. You also get points for taking over enemy bases and capturing the enemies flag or cores. There are 20 ranks going from recruit to general. When you get promoted, you’ll earn a new outfit. Sometimes you’ll need medals or badges too for getting a promotion.

There are 6 different game types: Team death match, death match, capture the flag, zones (capture enemy bases), Collect (collect cores and bring them back to your base) and hero (1 player from each team is a superhero for 1 minute and is hard to kill. Each kill the hero makes is 1 point for the team. When the hero dies someone else takes over his place). There is a extra CTF mode: Flying CTF. In this mode you may use warhawks to return the enemies flag to your base. There also is a dogfight mode, so you're only fighting with warhawks. You can dogfight in TDM or DM.

The graphics of this game aren’t bad, but since this game is one of the first PS3 exclusives so they didn’t use the capabilities of the PS3 to the fullest yet. Warhawk was the first game that was available on the Playstation Store and on Blue-ray disc. The game saw the light in the third quarter of 2007.

However, this game has one big issue; every game suffers from this: Laggy servers. In other games you won't notice the lag that easily, but in this game you'll notice it very easily. So try and throw your grenades in the direction you think your enemy is walking and you will kill him.

But if you don't care about the lag or you can look past my complaints about this game, then this game is something for you! So, if you own a PS3, and you have some money on your account, don’t hesitate to buy this game via Playstation Store. The game isn’t very expensive, so check it out!

CIA Operative: Solo Missions, a game made by the notorious ValuSoft which produces low-priced games, which usually can be seen back in the quality of the games. Some examples of games that actually were sub-par Battle for Troy, 18 Wheels Of Steel and Vietnam: Black Ops.

I’ll say it right of the bat, the game is way behind any other game released in the same year(2001), a year in which games like Halo(Xbox), Grand Turismo 3 and Grand Theft Auto 3. First thing you’ll notice is the graphics. Every object in this game looks like it has been made in under 5 minutes in a 3d graphics program, many object have corners in them while they were intentioned to be round, for example tables. And the textures they slapped over them are of poor quality aswell, they all consist of low-quality images, sometimes they’re even stretched on some surfaces making the quality even worse. And besides all that, there’s also a complaint when adjusting the resolution, since the game doesn’t render things in a higher resolution but rather just stretches out the entire image of the game, leaving you to see big pixels. The levels itself are also poorly designed, you’ll walk through many empty halls and if you look up to the sky you can even see the lines, which make you aware that you’re playing in a box on which they plastered a sky onto. The enemies also only have 2 death animations, 1 for a headshot and 1 for a bodyshot.

There’s isn’t a real storyline to the game, it consists of various missions, often not much different than the standard eliminate a target, leave innocent people alone/out of harm and kill anyone who resists. Okay, you get about one page of text before each mission explaining why the target has to be eliminated but seeing as there isn’t really one storyline, it’s a waste of time reading them. You’ll go to various areas in the world, but seeing as the levels are small and can be completed within 5 minutes, this doesn’t say really much.

The gameplay in this game is also horrible, the hit-detection is awful it only registers about 2/3 of the shots you hit on the enemy, not that it really is that much of a deal considering the AI is pretty much non-existant, they just stand where they were dropped at the beginning of the mission and shoot when they see you, except of course for the characters that got a scripted patrol, not even trying to find some cover or deploy some tactics, neither will they go looking if they should’ve heard shot, the only times when they do this, is when it’s scripted. The game also just gives you 3 guns to work with, a sniper, a pistol and a machine gun, that’s all, no guns you get later in the game, nope those are the ones you get. When you’re playing the game you’ll find yourself using the sniper rifle most of the time, considering it kills in 1 shot and it’s the most accurate, it doesn’t really matter when you use it, since the enemies don’t really pose a threat. The machinegun is horrid to play with, because the bullets spray everywhere, even if you point the gun in the enemy’s stomach, you’ll have to stand 2-3 feet away, to get at least a few decent shots. The pistol sprays a bit less, but is still pretty bad, and considering it has a slow firerate you better pick the sniper rifle(with which you'll eventually run out of ammunition).

One of the game’s biggest faults is that it’s way too easy, like the aforementioned bad AI. But besides that, bullets hurt the player little, if they even manage to hit you, because their aiming is as bad as yours and they seem to be standard equipped with a machinegun, except for the 2-3 snipers in towers or on rooftops, but most of the time they don’t even see you, and they’re pretty much just target practice.

The sound in this game is pretty standard, the gunsounds are pretty much like any other game. And you get spoken to in nationality-insulting stereotypical voices. You also only have 1 song playing in each level, no matter if you’re unnoticed or in a firefight.

The only positive thing about this game is that the artwork in the menus and loading screens is pretty good, but that can’t save the game. Those 10 drawings tops, can’t make up for such an abomination of a game.

I’ll conclude my review with saying that this game is not worth the money, in fact it’s not worth any money and I would suggest that the gamefanatic should steer away from ValuSoft games, well maybe except for some games like Battle For Troy or Vietnam: Black Ops(not that those games are terrific, they just suck less than this game.). CIA Operative: Solo Missions is a waste of money and time.

Genre: RPG/FPS/Survival Horror

Singleplayer only

Available on the PS3, XBOX 360 and PC.

Played on the PS3.

2K games is the creator of this game and is known for games like Mafia 2, Prey and the Sid Meier series (For example Civilization).

During a flight, your plane crashes in the ocean en you’re the only survivor. You discover a submarine in a tower en you descent to the bottom of the ocean and you enter the ghostly city of Rapture. When you enter Rapture, you get radio contact with the mysterious Atlas, after that you’ll have an encounter with the not-so-friendly inhabitants. You quickly realize that the inhabitants can no longer be reasoned with, and to make things worse they’re mutated aswell. That’s why they’ve gotten the name Splicers. Atlas explains that the creator, Andrew Ryan, is to blame for all of this and that’s why it becomes your task to kill Andrew Ryan. As the game progresses and you’re finding more audio devices from the inhabitants, you’ll get more information about what really happened in Rapture.

The streets of Rapture are being made unsafe by Little Sisters and Big Daddies aswell. The Little Sisters are sent out to suck ADAM out of bodies, which are spread all over Rapture. The Little Sisters are very weak, that’s why they’re protected by Big Daddies. Big Daddies are big and dangerous creatures in diving suits. ADAM is sort of a lifeforce, which you use to learn super powers. These super powers aren’t necessairly required to advance in the game, but they’re very handy. For example, you’re able to shoot fire and electricity with your hand, circumvent the security camera’s, become invisible and even shoot a large group of bees at your enemies which will attack them.

The graphics are pretty decent, the grim atmosphere of Rapture is presented well. There has also been made good use of light, preferably as little as possible to enhance the horror aspect, so you’ll be expecting an enemy in every corner. However, there are still some minor complaints. Sometimes when you kill an enemy there’s a framerate drop, at first this can get quite annoying but as time progresses you get used to it. Another complaint is texture pop-ups, which means that textures are still loading when you’re playing the level/area, and sometimes when you stand right in front of an object it’s texture’s details are still loading.

Bioshock can be compared best to Fallout 3. Both are released in the same period(at the end of 2008) and are both an RPG/Shooter. It’s dissapointing that Bioshock doesn’t have a big open world such as Fallout 3(and most other RPG games). RPG elements that are implemented for example are: Vendors which sell goods, being able to hack camera’s, vaults and turrets, being able to loot enemies and of course improving your stats.

Besides the fact that you don’t have an open world, it’s also dissapointing that there aren’t any side quests. You’re forced to follow the main storyline, you are however able to go back to pick up some items in case you forgot them.

Because there aren’t any sidequests the total playing time gets reduced.The first time playing through took about 20 hours, but then again I was trying to find all collectables and have been in every possible spot in the game.

Since a couple of months downloadable content has been available for Bioshock which will grant you a new gametype and New Game +. The latter means that you’re able to proceed with your original character, when you start a new game. I haven’t been able to play this content, because you need to pay for it via Playstation Store, which is another negative thing.

Despite some of the complaints, the game is really worth your money and if you happen to stumble upon the game in the store and you love the genre, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy the game.

Caesar 3, a game created by Sierra, a company known by classics such as King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest and Quest for Glory. This gaming company later on got absorbed by it’s parent company known as Activision.

Caesar 3 is a city-building game, the player needs to build a successful city and protect it from barbarians seeking to destroy it, the game features a singleplayer campaign in which the player can take 2 routes, a peaceful one or a more war oriented one, besides the singleplayer campaign there’s also a City Construction Kit, which allows you to play any scenario without having to play the campaign, Caesar 3 also has Map Building option, which can be found in the game’s directory.

In the singleplayer you take control of an area on which you’ll need to build a city, and whilst doing so, you’ll need to fulfil certain objectives, like getting a good standing with the emperor. In Caesar you can’t just slap down a great amount of houses and expect everything to go well, as your city grows people will demand more services, and next to that you’ll have to please the gods who’ll otherwise punish you. If the people get unhappy because there is for example little entertainment to be found, they’ll start riots which can give you hard time to get under control. So as a player you’re constantly building entertainment, prefectures (Which are Fire Departments and Police station in one building, Engineer posts (which prevents buildings from collapsing) only to keep the people happy, along that you’ll have to build Forums/Fora which provides you with money(by taxing the people) which you would otherwise only get by selling goods to neighbouring towns. And of course, you’ll be building Temples and throwing festivals to keep the gods happy, because you don’t want to get on their bad side, because for example if they throw a plague on your agriculture it could lead to food shortage and people will massively move away from your town, which can get you in a lot of trouble, possibly even lead to not making the deadline (if given of course).

Along the building of houses and keeping your villagers happy, you’ll spend a considerate time on both trading and defending your town, which can be managed on a map of the Roman empire, trading is quite an important aspect of the game since it gives you a regular amount of money and provides work for your villagers which makes them happy.

As far as graphics go, the game’s pretty decent, of course it’s fully 2D but the graphics are comparable to games like Sim City 3000, Red Alert 2 and Rollercoaster tycoon. Considering the game was released in 1998, the game developers did a great job at the graphics.

One of the biggest complaints about this game is that the game no longer uses the influence system but a walker system, which means that houses have access to certain building when a walker(a pedestrian in your town, coming from that building) passes a building, which can lead to a few frustrating problems, some buildings in your town won’t be passed by for example a prefecture guy or an engineer, which leads them to constantly collapse, making you rebuilding it over and over again.

I had a lot of fun playing this game, even with the problems which can become a bit annoying, but if you get used to it, it isn’t much of an issue. It’s complex and compelling gameplay make it fun to play, on top of that it can become challenging and will require a lot of thought and planning to complete a level. If you’re ever able to get your hands on a copy, you probably have a lot of fun, especially if you’re into the genre, the game also provides some historical information, so you might learn something while playing.